Male and female college students' learning styles differ: an opportunity for instructional diversification

College Student Journal, Sept, 2002 by Gabe Keri

Simpson (1995), for example, raised an important point about his study in which he found that males tended to be more field-independent than females, and yet more females outperformed their male counterparts. The question is, "What possibly accounts for females' academic achievement other than observed learning style differences between males and females?"

Efficacy of teaching notwithstanding, studies on learning styles have provided mixed results concerning college males' and females' learning styles. The purpose of the current investigation was to determine whether males and females in college differ in reference to their learning styles. The question vital to this investigation was as follows: Do the learning styles of college males and females differ?

Method

Sample

A convenience sample of 693 students from a Mid-western university and a community college participated in the study. Of this number, 50.5% were females and 45.5%, males. 86% were of traditional age (17-23 years), and 10% were characterized as non-traditional (24-up). 85% were Caucasian, 1.3% African American, 2.5% Chicano, 6.2% Asian, 3% Native American, and 2% other. The average age of the students was 25.

Instrument

Canfield's Learning Style inventory (1988) was used. Canfield's inventory is a self-report questionnaire of 30 attitudinal items. The items describe modalities of students' preferred learning styles. Participants ranked their responses for each item on a four-point ipsative scale, ranging from (1) for most liked choice, through (4) least. The instrument has eight subscales, representing conditions for learning (e.g., peer, competition and independence), four subscales dealing with areas of interest (e.g., numeric, qualitative, and people), and four modes of learning scales (e.g., listening, reading, direct experience).

Canfield's learning style inventory includes additional items for which students predict their final grades in a course (A, B, C or D). Canfield (1988) reported both alpha and test-retest reliabilities of the instrument as ranging between. 87 and .97. For the current study, the computed reliabilities regarding this sample were found to range between .39 to .86 with a majority of the scores for the respective subscales falling between .67 and .85.

Procedure

There were 25 classes involved in this investigation. At the university, instructors from Engineering and Rhetoric were contacted to allow the last 10 minutes of their class time for students enrolled in their classes to participate in the study. At the community college students from Data Processing, Criminal Justice, Psychology, English and Social Science courses participated. The faculty members administered the surveys to students; however indicated to students not to feel obligated to participate in the study. Thus, those students who did not want to participate were free to leave (as was true of the University students). On average students spent 10 minutes to complete the inventory.

To avoid duplication of student participation, however, those students who agreed to participate in one class were exempt from participating in another class from which data was later collected. Specifically, the Canfield's learning style inventory was administered in the middle of a fall term to grant students an opportunity to be exposed to varying instructional styles, and to be better able to express their own learning style needs.